received several rave reviews, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" and had a clear shot at a National Book Award until the awards committee found out (by asking me) that I was not a U.S. citizen.

He has since been naturalized, but his writings are so patriotic that the National Book Award committee wouldn`t look at him these days.

However, since I remembered that the National Book Award judges "consider only books written by American citizens" I wondered if the Pulitzer Prize had a similar restriction, because we`ve been hearing a lot about Pulitzer Prize winning illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas.

The Pulitzer Prize judges would not have been able to find out Vargas`s citizenship by asking him—he was living a lie.

It turns out that journalists don`t have to be citizens to win the prize according to the Pulitzer FAQ:

Only U.S. citizens are eligible to apply for the Prizes in Letters, Drama and Music (with the exception of the History category in Letters where the book must be a history of the United States but the author may be of any nationality). For the Journalism competition, entrants may be of any nationality but work must have appeared in a U.S. newspaper published at least once a week, on a newspaper`s Web site or on an online news organization`s Web site. (Please also see FAQ #10)

FAQ #10, by way, says that VDARE.com is eligible for the Pulitzer, political consideration very much aside—we`re an "online news site that publishes at least weekly during the calendar year and that adheres to the highest journalistic principles."

As Steve Sailer points out here, the story that Vargas, an illegal alien from Asia, (Phillippines) shared a Pulitzer for covering was the Virginia Tech Massacre, comitted by a legal alien from Asia (Korea), and what it was about was the reaction of cellphone equipped students like Jamal Albarghouti, a legal alien from the West Bank.